Gift Ideas for Cooks & Foodies

Whether you are looking for an esoteric chef gadget for the cook who has everything or cool gift basket ideas for your favorite foodie, here are some gift ideas for people who love to cook.

Print Your Own Cookbook

Do you have a collection of beloved family recipes that you'd like to preserve, or are you a budding cookbook writer? Thanks to the web and digital printing technology, it's easy and affordable for anyone to produce a professional looking cookbook. Blurb allows customers to upload their recipes, photos and text using a variety of elegantly designed cook book templates. No graphic design skills are necessary. A 40-page hardcover book starts at $12.95. A perfectly personal gift.

Gifts For Serious Cooks

For the serious cook, Culinary Classics, a professional chef uniform supplier, sells made-to-order chef jackets in a choice of colors and fabrics, priced from $37-$60. For an additional $8, they will personalize it with a name embroidered on the front. Custom aprons, chef toques, shirts and pants are also available. Chef's Resource, their motto is "serious tools for serious chefs." This online shop caters to cooks seeking top-of-the-line tools, knives, appliances, cookware and other items. Chef's Resource is also the only online store in the U.S. to carry Staub ceramic "oven to table" bakeware.

Buon Appetito

For those who love Italian food (and who doesn't), these online shops are great sources for gifts. There is Gustiamo which means "let's taste together." Based in the Bronx, NY, these importers of traditional Italian food products travel to villages throughout Italy and buy directly from small farmers and producers. Their gift boxes arrive packed in recycled "Outer Borough Chic wood crates." In the San Francisco Bay Area, there is A.G. Ferrari, another importer of top quality Italian food and wine from small producers. This company also offers Mothers Day gift baskets.

Edible Nostalgia

For the old fashioned foodie, Home Town Favorites sells retro candies and other hard-to-find American food products that can only be found in certain regions of the country, or in limited quantities (coffee syrup, abba-zabba bars, junket custard and other unusual items). The company was founded in 1996, originally to serve retirees who moved to Florida and couldn't find their favorite regional products in local supermarkets. The company now sells over 2,000 items and ships throughout the U.S. and internationally.

Related: Gourmet File's shopping directory has many more resources for food and cooking gifts.

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